The Best of Friends
By Fr. Gabriel O’Donnell, O.P.
The lament about the increase in anxiety and the epidemic rise in suicide among the younger generation is often reported by news outlets and in social media. “Why” and “What to do about it” are usually part of the report. These clear indications of deep inner conflicts and emotional struggles suggest that we are raising youngsters lacking inner resources to cope with daily life and even to accept the reality of who they have become in their short lives. “Who am I?” and “Why am I like this?” are questions posed to medical professionals and religious leaders alike. Loneliness and isolation abound among those on the road to adulthood. Parents, teachers and Catholic priests as pastoral counselors, spiritual directors, or confessors are daily confronted with such issues.
There are no simple answers to the difficulties facing the rising generations, but part of the current crisis is a failure to acknowledge that one’s identity is rooted in the deepest part of us, that realm invisible even to ourselves: the heart, the hidden spirit, the soul of the person. I speak of that region of the self where reality strikes most forcefully whether that be love and intimacy or rejection and betrayal. There, the spiritual resources to endure pain, sorrow and disappointment must be developed. The interior self must come to terms with the truth that the kind of person one has become will determine what one chooses as the direction of one’s life. Social media and electronic devices as a way of life make such authentic inner choices and decisions difficult.
The universal longing within the human person for love, acceptance and significance can open a person to the encounter with God, with Jesus Christ. In the Gospel, Jesus always touches hearts: His words and actions reach into the depths of a person’s spirit to convince them of his unconditional love despite sin, confusion or any form of misery that burdens one. Jesus promises to remain with us always as companion and friend. This encounter, of course, requires faith.
Pope Leo speaks of the “journey of the heart” as the challenge every Christian must make to discover true meaning and happiness in life. Here he reflects Saint Augustine’s famous dictum, “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Our culture, preoccupied with self-help, self-promotion and self-actualization on one hand, and self-harm and self-destruction on the other, fails to realize that the One who is truly Other, God Himself, desires to fill the emptiness, suffering and loneliness of the human heart. He sent his Son to take on a human nature to convince us of his love and offer an intimate friendship that can heal the deepest wounds and yield a harvest of happiness even in the midst of suffering and pain.
Fr. Gabriel O’Donnell, O.P., entered the Order of Preachers in 1963 and was ordained a priest in 1970. He is a professor and spiritual director at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, MD. He previously taught at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC; St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia, PA; and the Angelicum in Rome. He serves as the vice-postulator for the canonization of Blessed Michael J. McGivney, founder of the Knights of Columbus, and Venerable Rose Hawthorne, O.P., the foundress of the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne.
Photo: The Last Supper, Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1449-1494, Museo di San Marco, Florence, Italy
